Coates Academy
by north-north-west
Summary: The FAYZ Describes by the student of Coates Academy. This follows the story of Caine before he arrives at Perdido Beach.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: Brianna

Brianna wasn't really paying attention to her math teacher; she was reading a book under her desk. But she looked up when everyone started talking.

Mr. Denis wasn't standing at the front of the room anymore. When had he left? Bri could have sworn he'd been talking just a second ago.

She turned to Kate the girl sitting next to her.

"What happened?"

An expression of confusion danced across Kate's face.

"I'm…..not sure. Mr. Denis was just talking up there and he suddenly disappeared."

"What?"

"I don't know! He's gone! I was staring right at him, and suddenly he was, like, not there!"

Andrew, a boy sitting in the front row, got up and reached out to the place where Mr. Denis had been standing.

"Where did he go?" Andrew demanded, but no one was paying attention. People were talking and whispering and sending nervous glances around the room.

Andrew and his friend Fredrico were at the door now, opening it and peering out into the hallway. Some girl, Maria or something (Bri couldn't remember her name) got up and pushed him aside, stepping out into the empty hallway. Bri stood up, and followed the rest of the class to the doorway. The hallway was slowly filling with other students. Bri slid past a group of kids into the hallway. There was something eerie about the same hallway she'd passed through everyday for the past year, since she came to Coates Academy. The voices were hushed and slightly scared. No one was moving anywhere, people were just bunched together.

"Bri!" Bri jumped at the voice behind her.

"Taylor! You scared me!"

Taylor was a newbie at Coates Academy, having arrived just about three months ago. Brianna wasn't much better, she'd only been here a year, but she'd shown Taylor around those first days. The girls had become close, through conversations between classes, studying together, laughter and tears, but they also shared a secret.

Taylor looked like she might laugh at Bri, but was too caught up in the seriousness of the moment. She glanced down the hallway.

"What the heck is happening?" She asked.

"I don't know!" Bri looked around nervously.

"As far as I can tell all the teachers and counselors just disappeared," Taylor paused, "I asked some kids from different classes about it."

There was a scream from the down hallway.

Bri glanced at Taylor, and then they ducked into the nearest classroom.

Already in the room stood Caine Soren, Diana Ladris and Drake Merwin, the tree most dangerous and powerful members of the student body. The three faced away from Bri and Taylor, watching out the window as students slowly made their way out the doors into the schools well-groomed athletic fields.

Drake Merwin turned around first. Bri met his eyes, but was forced to turn away as they drilled holes strait trough her. He smiled, observing her inability to hold eye contact, which made Bri shudder slightly. Out of everyone at the whole school, Drake Merwin was probably the most dangerous and most definitely the creepiest.

Diana and Caine turned around. Though she wasn't close to any of the three, Bri still felt like she knew something about them. She didn't quite trust any of them, but she knew that they knew that she had it. The power. So did Taylor, Caine and Diana.

"What's going on?" Taylor asked, hoping Caine or Diana might know more than she and Bri did.

"All the teachers still disappeared." Caine said, in a self assured manor, as if he totally understood everything that was going on.

"So did all the adults, as far as we can tell" Diana confirmed, "We sent out some scouts to check the different floors, just to make sure."

Right on cue, Benno burst through the door.

Benno was a large, tall eighth grader. One of the school's bigger bullies. Of course, he worked for Caine. All the bullies seemed to.

"No adults on the third floor." He gasped loudly. He had obviously been running hard.

"Okay" Diana did some sort or mental calculation.

"We should send someone down for help at Perdido Beach, I mean, all the adults in the world couldn't have disappeared." She said.

"We don't need help!" Caine argued, "We can run things!"

Diana opened her mouth to disagree, but decided against it.

"I…I can call down to Perdido Beach" Bri pulled out her cell phone from her purse and flipped open the lid.

"Oh crap I haven't got service here." She looked up.

Caine went over to the teacher's phone attached to the wall next to the door. He put it to his ear.

"No dial tone..." He looked down confused.

Diana grabbed the phone from his limp fingers and dialed a number into it without listening for a dial tone. She held it up to her ear and listened for a while. It wasn't hard to tell she was in very strong denial of what she was experiencing.

"It's not…ringing…" She hung it back up on the wall.

Drake, who had been standing in the back the whole time, stepped forward. He went over to the row of five computers lined up against the side wall and turned one on.

"What are you doing?" Caine demanded.

"Email" Drake answered, sliding into the seat, "If we can't call people, we can at least email them. Maybe the phone line's just down or something."

Benno, still looking out the window, shuddered.

"Hey look! I think that's a teacher! Isn't that a teacher?"

Everyone in the room, including Taylor and Bri rushed to the window.

Diana was the first to speak.

"No, Benno, you idiot! That's not a teacher that's Eric!"

Eric was an extremely large six-foot-plus student. He was making his way through the fields towards the woods, flanked by a few of the lesser bullies who followed him around most of the time. Not that they were a challenge to Caine. None of the kids trudging across the field being Eric, Bri noticed had the power.

Disappointed, the six spread back out around the classroom. Drake returned to the computer, now on. He selected the internet icon, and clicked on it. Nothing happened. He clicked again. And again. And again.

"Internet's down." Drake mumbled.

"Some one go get Jack." Diana turned to Bri and Taylor. "You guys go get computer Jack and see if any adults are around."

Bri grabbed Taylor and rushed out the door, glad to leave the group of bullies, but afraid to without a reason.

* * *

**Authors Note:**

**Thanks to everyone who reads this, I will update shortly. Please comment and tell me if you liked it or not...**

**~polymath78**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Diana

"Who needs adults, anyway?" Caine asked.

Diana knew she should answer, she was the only on in the room, so he had to be asking her, but she knew the answer, and Caine seemed content in not believing it. The thing was, adults were the ones who provided the food and power to the world and if all the adults really were gone, they were in for some tough times. Though that really didn't make sense, all the adults just disappearing. People couldn't just disappear into thin air.

But she'd seen it. She watched as her English teacher was just talking, and suddenly just…wasn't. No explosion, no lightning bolt, just gone.

"Hey, Diana, I'm talking to you."

Dian blinked and looked up at Caine, sitting in the office chair at the desk of the room where they'd set up "headquarters".

"What?" She asked

"We can run things can't we? Who needs adults? Maybe…maybe this all happened for a reason…"

"What? You think this all happened because you were meant to rule the school? You want to take over don't you?"

"Diana…"

"You have the power. You want to take over the school, go ahead. Who's going to stop you? Everyone knows not to get in your way."

Caine smiled and held his hands out, palms out.

Diana flinched as he pointed them in her direction.

"I need your help." He said, "I can't rule the world by myself."

"The world?"

"Well, Freddie said that as far as he could tell there were no adults down at the beach. He drove down this morning. Of course he nearly killed himself in the process."

Diana shrugged, "That doesn't mean the adults aren't all gone from the world. Maybe there's someone else out there with the power that transported them. You, know like Taylor can, except more powerful."

"You mean…more than a four bar?"

"Just because you're the most powerful person at this school doesn't mean it's impossible for someone to have more power than you. Kids all over the world could develop this power. Even adults, though none of them here seem to have. It could even be someone at the school who's responsible for it!"

"Have you read everybody at the school?"

"Almost…most of them have no power at all. If someone was powerful enough to make all the teachers just disappear like that…well, I think we would have noticed. None of the others kept it secret for very long."

"So you don't think we have someone who is a…."

"I doubt there is anyone at the school that is more powerful than you, if that's what you mean."

The door opened as she spoke, and in walked Drake Merwin.

No one felt like saying 'hi', so Caine got straight to the point.

"Did you do what I told you to?"

"Yes, I checked." Drake said, sitting down on the chair Next to Diana which made her jump and sit up.

"Most of the tenth graders are…disappeared…" Drake wasn't quite sure what to call it, "They're gone. And all of the eleventh graders too, far as I can tell. About half of the ninth graders..."

"I wonder what the line was." Diana mused, "How whoever did this decided who was going to…you know, disappear."

"It wasn't random. There had to be some pattern to it." Caine chewed on his thumb slightly, leaning back in the chair.

"We have to do something," Drake concluded, "Kids are trying to take over. Something has to be done before they mess something up real bad. We need to take control of everybody and manage the kids who have the power."

"Right. How do you think we should do that?" It wasn't a question of if they thought they could, Diana noted. Caine had absolute faith that he had the power to take over the school, not that Diana was arguing, but she marveled at his confidence, the way he thought he could do everything and, well, sometimes he tricked her into believing he could.

"You need to show everyone that you're in control," she thought aloud, "Like make a speech or use the power right in front of everyone here."

Caine nodded.

"I'll help," Drake got up, "I'm all for taking over the school."

"Great. Caine spun his desk chair," Let's get started.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 ~ Andrew

He was not, by far, the most intelligent or brightest kid in the group, but yet it was some how Andrew who figured it out. Fifteen. Fifteen was the age at which you disappeared. That's what had happened to all the teachers. And the teachers weren't the end of it.

Though everyone realized all the adults were gone, many students still made their way to the cafeteria for breakfast. Andrew woke up early, he'd forgotten to shut off his alarm clock, so he dressed and went downstairs. Kids had raided the kitchens already, but there was still a lot of food. Andrew noticed a group of the kids he usually sat with, all together in the middle of the room, chatting sleepily and pouring cereal into mismatched bowls.

Benno greeted him as he sat down, patting him on the back.

"Hey Andy!"

"Don't call me that" Andrew yawned, reached for the cereal boxes assembled semi neatly on the table top. Andrew examined the people at the table. He saw Caine, quietly whispering with Diana and Drake (nothing new there), and Computer Jack, Caine's little minion, looking tiny as he sat uncomfortably fiddling with some small hand held device over his uneaten bowl of Cheerios. Next to him was Dekka, who sometimes sat with them, talking to her friends Kathryn and Jeannine. Benno, Freddie and Ethan, the bullies Caine usually assigned the dirty work, were unusually loud for breakfast, laughing loudly and joking with each other. Andrew was quick to notice their nervous glances around the room and realized they were scared. Scared like everybody else should be.

Andrew didn't look like a bully. He didn't have the bulky frame of Benno. He didn't strike fear into everyone near him like Drake. He didn't have the self confident gait or the eminent power in his eyes like Caine. Actually, he looked like a pretty normal kid.

Andrew, though, had the power. At three bars he was one of the more powerful ones at Coates Academy. He mused silently what this power meant in this new world with no teachers and no phone connections. He wondered what was happening. He wondered when someone down at Perdido Beach was going to come up here and notice all the adults were gone. It probably wasn't going to last long. Some of the townies worked up here and would notice something was wrong as soon as they came to work this afternoon, right?

Unless _everyone_ was gone. What if the students of Coates Academy were the last people left in the whole entire world? What if the whole entire world didn't exist anymore?

Despite how much Caine seemed to like the idea of kids taking control, Andrew was nervous. He knew that without adults the bullies could get away with anything. People could die. The kids with the power would be in control. Andrew had a feeling people without the power meant little to Caine. Actually, Andrew had a feeling Caine didn't give a crap about anyone but himself.

Andrew looked up and saw that a young dark-skinned girl named Louise was talking to Caine and Diana, who looked interested in what she was saying. Very interested. Caine stood up and grabbed Diana's arm, pulling her after him. He scanned the table and pointed to Andrew.

"Andrew, come with us," he demanded in that voice that Andrew thought could make anyone do anything. Andrew stood up, ignoring the rest of his cereal, and followed Caine, Diana and Louise out the door, having no idea why or where they were going.

"Here," said Louise, "It's right around the corner here."

They'd been hiking through Trotters Ridge for about a mile on one of the flatter trails. It was easy going, though Andrew's school uniform had some mud splattered on the legs of the grey pants.

Diana was in front of Andrew with Caine right in front of her. Louise was leading the way. She wouldn't tell them what she was leading them to, but she said it was something they all had to see.

Finally, she turned around a ledge and….

The forest just stopped. There was a wall right there in the middle of the forest. It seemed to go on forever up and to each side. Andrew felt suddenly exposed and miniscule next to something to enormous. He heard Diana quietly draw in a breath and saw Caine looking shocked.

"What is that?" Diana asked, snapping back to the emotionless expression she usually wore.

"Some sort of wall." Caine answered; like that statement answered all the questions that had popped up in the last day.

"As far as I can tell, it travels all the way around here and down to Perdido Beach." I went down there. I would have brought you that was, but, well; you know what people down there think of us."

Andrew reached up, stepping forward, and touched the barrier right as Louise shouted out.

Andrew's hand retracted from the wall faster than he'd ever moved anything before. It stung incredibly.

"I forgot to mention not to touch it." Louise half smiled at Andrew, who didn't think it was very funny.

But as Andrew wrenched his hand backwards, a realization set it suddenly.

"Fifteen," he said.

"What?" Diana demanded.

"Fifteen. Everyone who was fifteen disappeared. Fifteen and over, obviously. I should have realized this yesterday!"

Diana considered, "He's right," she said.

"It makes sense." Caine thought, "Well, no it doesn't really make sense. But this might just be the first piece of the puzzle."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four: Jack

Caine had a plan. And, because, well, because he was Caine, the plan had an estimated success rate of about 99.999998%. Computer Jack's hurried calculations (yes, he was actually calculating this. With real actual numbers) were interrupted as more people walked into the room. There was Caine's usual ensemble of bullies but more people too, people from the list.

Caine and Diana referred to it as Jack's list. It was always 'Add him to Jack's list' but if it were left to Jack he would have nothing to do with it. Especially after what had happened this morning.

Caine had shown interest, ever since he, Diana, and Drake had returned from their little walk in the woods, in the kids with the power. So, Jack had spent the afternoon tracking down kids with Diana and getting their power level. It seemed most of the kids were now walking into the room. There was a nervous tension. No one spoke. The line ended with Drake Merwin, his cold calculating eyes boring into the back of Dekka with a cruel smile. Jack felt a pang of guilt strike. He wasn't close to Dekka, but she had once stood up for him when kids were making fun of him. Dekka had been at Coates for along time, Jack knew, but never seemed to fit in with many of the other kids.

They filed into the office. Caine sat at the desk chair and Diana perched on the edge, surveying the group of people before her. Drake moved to a corner holding onto his sadistic smile. Jack sat in one of the three chairs along the wall of the office with his laptop balanced on his knee. He had a Excel open to a document he'd begun only that morning. It didn't look like much, but it had unseen power. Kind of like all the people who's names were written on it, Jack figured.

"Hello everyone," said Caine, "As you probably know, I am Caine Soren and I have called you all together to suggest something to you. Obviously, this is a new world. Things changed. All the adults have disappeared. Someone needs to begin doing something. Do any of you really think that the adults will come back? I'll be frank with you all: I don't. I know many of you have gone to see the wall. Jack here has used his rough calculations to draw out an approximate map of where it extends. Some people have gone dawn to Perdido Beach. Already, students have disappeared."

This brought silence to the group. They were all running mental scans of who they hadn't seen.

"There are unknown dangers in this new world. This is why I am proposing a plan to you. Why you? Because you are special. I think you all know what I mean."

Now, everyone was holding on to every word he said, even Diana was turned toward him. He looked around, seeming to see into everyone's eyes at once.

"I suggest we go into Perdido beach and propose to make peace, to smooth over old hard feelings. I need all of your help. We need to take action or else this new world with its new dangers will consume us. Who's with me?"

No one moved.

"Step forward, people." Drake growled from the back. Several people jumped and almost everyone stepped forward. Caine noticed everyone, their willingness or hesitancy, the boldness or fear in their eyes.

"We will begin to make plans tomorrow. We need to form some semblance of control here, at the school and a plan for our entrance to Perdido Beach. Come back here tomorrow at eight." He paused, "I mean, only if you're interested, of course." He motioned to Drake who opened the door. The group rushed out, but Drake's unbroken stare made sure that many would return in the morning. Jack stood up, but Caine said, "Jack, stay." Jack was aware of how much this sounded like a dog command.

When the office cleared out, Jack noted that Diana was gone from her perch on the desk. Caine motioned for Drake to close the door and turned to Jack.

"I need the list."


End file.
